My second book, If We Burn, is now on sale. My first book, The Jakarta Method, still coming out in translations. Only here to post links to North South Notes:
Articles by Vincent Bevins
Vincent Bevins (@northsouthnotes)
Three notes on the Brazil elections - - - I decided that I don’t have the time, and I have not carried out the necessary investigation for the right to speak on the subject – at least not in a proper text. But I do have scattered thoughts based on my experiences here in São Paulo, compared to what I experienced in 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2022 (I was here for all those elections). Structural analysis is more difficult but crucial.
The 'vibe shift' was a leveraged buyout
Far too many people in my cohort believe, albeit subconsciously, in the “marketplace of ideas.” Even for media professionals who have come to identify as leftists, who study the political economy of communication, who oppose “tech” domination of the public sphere, those deep-liberal assumptions are tough to kick.
The stampede
Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) is now one of the world’s largest and best-known social movements. The hundreds of thousands of families in the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra push for radical land reform, most famously by occupying unused or misused land and agitating for redistribution.
But leftistly
Before the publication of something I wroteon Serbia’s student movement, editors at the London Review of Books cut a passage I quite liked. This is not a complaint, and their decision was not ideological — the sentences remained until the pages changed. This is it: Students told me that their movement employed a ‘left-wing organisational model open to the many right-wing members of the student population’.
Will Lula Win the Century? Original
Who is the most successful politician of the 21st century? The leader who has seen his nation accumulate the most wealth and influence while maintaining power must be Chinese President Xi Jinping. But if we require that the titleholder has won competitive multi-party elections, a wider range of people have a chance. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel governed for a long time, and with a calm hand. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would also be in the mix.
Botched coup part two
"The fact that a billionaire real estate playboy who liked to slap his name on steaks and wine has proven to be a better diplomat and military strategist than every other politician and foreign policy expert over the last 30 years is such a damning indictment of the DC establishment I honestly don’t know how they recover.” — William Wolfe, 2026, on the day the United States and Israel attacked Iran. “Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.
News Letter V
We are alive! Due to the response to our appeal in March, we have officially launched North South Notes. My sincere thanks to everyone who has subscribed or offered support. But this means we have a little bit of housekeeping. Anyone signed up as a Founder has a right to two signed books, sent anywhere in the world, if you want them. On Thursday (May 28) I will send everyone in that subscriber class an email (using the address registered with Substack) to get your mailing address.
News Letter IV
I want to sincerely thank everyone who made a pledge in response to my long and rambling mission statement. We are still officially in “subscription drive” phase, but a number of generous people have put us well on the way to our goal. I read each comment that came in with the pledges, and they were really encouraging. At the same time, I apologize if you had problems using the “Subscribe” buttons to make a pledge. I got a few complaints of this type.
Serbia’s Student Movement
On 1 November 2024, the canopy of a recently renovated train station in Novi Sad collapsed, killing sixteen people. In the weeks that followed, a new protest movement coalesced; it continues to demonstrate sixteen months later. For its leaders, the collapse is symptomatic of the corruption at the heart of Aleksandar Vučić’s increasingly authoritarian government.
Seeking your support
Dear subscribers and sympathetic readers, After five months of experimentation, we have decided we should go forward with a version of North South Notes that regularly publishes serious writing. The response has been very encouraging. We want to continue to pay contributors around the world, and pay them well; I want to keep using this platform to write about global developments. To do this, we need to raise the funds.
Africa Is a Country
Interview by William Shoki When Israel and the United States launched their assault on Iran in February 2026, one question seemed to animate debate as much as the attack itself: what did Iranians actually think about it? Some claimed Iranians were cheering the bombs on and the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei, finally free from a regime they despised. Others insisted they had rallied around the flag, that national solidarity had overridden whatever grievances people held against the Islamic Republic.
Vincent Bevins (@northsouthnotes)
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Imperial theater and the world-systemic self-coup
In 1954 the CIA was planning to overthrow the president of Guatemala, and a New York Times reporter figured it out. It was not exactly a secret, in Central America, that Washington was trying to destroy the liberal Jacobo Árbenz. But one journalist, Sydney Gruson, was carrying out investigations that the Agency believed to be especially “harmful.” Worse, he was actually publishing them.
Vincent Bevins (@northsouthnotes)
“Listen to Venezuelans” is self-evidently good advice but the clue is in the final letter of that sentence. This admonition is often presented after a single Venezuelan offers an interpretation as if it were the final say, which is something you would never let fly if you took Venezuela seriously as a real place.
News Letter III
Dear friends, I write to you from Serbia, where students have been protesting the government of Aleksandar Vučić for an entire year. Like every one of these cases, it has features which make it unique within a new wave of dramatic protests taking place around the world. I almost wrote “youth-led protests,” so you would know what I was talking about, but that is tautological.
North South Notes
North South Notes is currently in an “experimental phase,” and we are accepting pledges. What this means is that, after a few years of using this platform in a very personal and off-beat way, I have begun to pay contributors around the world for original reporting and analysis. I will not turn on payments (and accept the money that is “pledged”) unless I am sure that I can make it work.
Regime collapse Original
A Financial Times report on Donald Trump’s latest offensive against Venezuela is admirably honest. To start with, there is a description of motives: At stake in Venezuela are the world’s largest proven oil reserves and valuable deposits of gold, diamonds and coltan. A US ally in the last century, the South American nation moved into the orbit of Russia, China and Iran under Hugo Chávez, the ex-army officer who led a “Bolivarian” socialist revolution from 1999 until his death from cancer in 2013.
De Jakartamethode
In ‘De Jakartamethode’ laat Vincent Bevins zien dat de brute uitroeiing van ongewapende linksdenkenden een belangrijk onderdeel was van een van de grootste Amerikaanse overwinningen tijdens de Koude Oorlog. In 1965 hielp de Amerikaanse regering het Indonesische leger bij een bloedige zuivering, waarbij naar schatting een miljoen vermeende communisten – vaak onschuldige burgers – om het leven kwamen.
Protestas masivas sin revoluciones
En los últimos años, las manifestaciones y las revueltas han movilizado a un gran número de personas en todo el mundo. Sin embargo, estos movimientos no han logrado las transformaciones radicales que propugnaban. Es más, en algunos casos incluso han allanado el camino para que la derecha se haga con el poder y se instauren dictaduras militares. Los actos de protesta siguen siendo una forma popular de conflicto político, pero ¿qué lecciones podemos extraer de una década de revoluciones perdidas?
Preparing for Zero Hour: Values and Geopolitics in Latvia and Lithuania
Are values a luxury to be cast aside when your country is under threat of invasion, or is values-based politics part of building resilience? Two Baltic Green politicians whose parties have recently joined national governments discuss the opportunities and challenges of pursuing transformative agendas in times of geopolitical tension. Richard Wouters: Both your parties entered national government after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Nostalgia for 2021
When did Google stop working? Was it this year? Maybe, a few years ago? Or maybe it never actually worked, and I am just remembering the years of my youth as I wish that I had lived them? I know what I am supposed to do: I ask Google Gemini. Great, that is helpful. I am right and wrong. I then asked, “Am I going crazy?” The answer is unequivocal. Gemini says: “you're definitely not going crazy!” Thank you! Still, for some reason, I do not trust him.
News Letter II
I have a big (long) cover story in this month’s edition of The Nation, on Brazil’s much-beloved Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). It is now online, here. It is long. Speaking of Brazil, President Donald Trump’s tariff misadventures reminded me of a story from 2018. After winning the presidential election, Jair Bolsonaro announced that he would abolish the Ministry of Environment.
The Power and Symbolism of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement
Feature / April 8, 2025 This Land Is Our Land How Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement emerged from right-wing rule stronger than ever. The Power and Symbolism of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement After mobilizing to defend democracy and meet people’s immediate needs, the radical Marxist organization emerged from the Bolsonaro regime stronger than ever.
The US left in the Cold War
The year is 1954. The Second Red Scare is underway, and Joseph McCarthy is working to decimate what is left of the Communist Party USA, which issued hundreds of thousands of membership cards in the first half of the 20th century. The Young Socialist League meets to discuss its position on a major geopolitical question.
News Letter
I have a review essay out in the London Review of Books, on the Indonesian revolution, and David Van Reybrouck’s Revolusi, here. This month I launched the Brazilian edition of If We Burn, which we rendered as A Década da Revolução Perdidain American Portuguese. Boitempo Editorial has done a fabulous job with the translation, cover, and promotion.
Operation Product
Indonesia rarely makes the headlines. It is the least understood of the world’s most populous countries and the largest majority Muslim country, its population of 280 million exceeded only by those of the US, India and China; it is the world’s fourteenth largest country by area and its economy is the fifth largest in Asia. It has been known to Europeans since 1512 and gained independence from the Netherlands 75 years ago. Its citizens span hundreds of ethnic groups and languages.
I'm still here
Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here) — Directed by Walter Salles, 2024 If you set a film in early 1970s Brazil, you have an excuse to use some of the best songs of all time. If the action takes place in Ipanema, you can point the camera at some of the most stunning beauty surrounding any city ever built.
I'm still here
Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here) — Directed by Walter Salles, 2024 If you set a film in early 1970s Brazil, you have an excuse to use some of the best songs of all time. If the action takes place in Ipanema, you can point the camera at some of the most stunning beauty surrounding any city ever built.
Humanshoe theory
Imagine you are at the top of a lush green mountain, enshrouded in light mist, but high enough to clearly see the landscape below. Your view is open in every direction. You can see, to your left, a mighty river with an imposing city arising in the distance. Turn to the right, and small villages dot some hills. To their right, a dense forest, with a flock of white birds soaring overhead. Now turn your body ninety degrees further to the right, and there is an entirely different scene.
If We Burn One Year Later
In recent weeks when someone asks me what I am working on, I say “nothing” (celebratory). The more accurate answer is that I continue to promote my second book, as it begins to come out in translation (Italian was first, next comes Brazil), while I finish up some magazine pieces and figure out what I will do next. If We Burncame out a year ago, and I have been incredibly grateful for the response.
It's free real estate
In advanced capitalist societies, if you want to stay alive, you have two options. If you are lucky, you can live in a house that you own. In the United States, property owners benefit from a range of direct and indirect government subsidies virtually ensuring that, even if they do nothing, they can count on rising property values. In 2021 in that country, simply owning property was a better way to accumulate wealth than actually doing any work.
Bolsonarista swag
Last month, I attended the fifth instalment of CPAC Brasil, in the city of Balneário Camboriú. This is an import from US American political culture, and those letters stand for “Conservative Political Action Conference,” rather than anything in Portuguese. I covered the event as part of a long New York Times Magazine investigation, which was published yesterday. But — I hear you asking — what can you buy there? What is the gear like.
Brazil's Far Right Plots Its Return
As president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro was often called the Trump of the Tropics, an association the Bolsonaro family actively cultivated. From the moment he was elected in 2018, he loudly celebrated the United States - in his first year in office, he even saluted the U.S. flag - but he saved his most intense loyalty for one American.
With or without you
Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers by Andrey Mir (2020) Internet for the People:The Fight for Our Digital Future by Ben Tarnoff (Verso, 2022) In Postjournalism, Andrey Mir’s best points are sometimes a bit overstated, but one feels that the emphasis is justified. Given just how smug and uncurious his implicit targets can be, it feels right.
Learning to read
Ten years ago, more or less, I realized that I had forgotten how to read. This was an embarrassing surprise, for a number of reasons. First, I had loved books since I was a little kid, devouring some of the big classics before they were ever assigned in class, and always wondered if I could become a writer. Second, I was actually a writer.
Avó Dezanove e o Segredo do Soviético
A young boy is growing up on the burning-hot coast of Luanda, as Cuban soldiers and Soviet advisers help to defend Angola from South African forces bent on crushing the revolution and imposing a government that is friendly to the Apartheid regime.
Why a Decade of Revolts Didn’t Bring the Revolution
In If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, Vincent Bevins chronicles the protests that erupted across the globe from 2010 to 2020. Fueled by viral images on social media and democratic, horizontalist ideals, millions of people marched on the streets to demand change.
'If We Burn': The Limits of Mass Protest with Vincent Bevins
The 2010s were a decade of revolt. From Athens to Atlanta, Santiago to Seoul, a global wave of protest brought masses of people into confrontation with the status quo, demanding an end to neoliberalism, racism, climate change, and more. Yet despite this upswell of grassroots political activity, little lasting, positive change followed. What sparked the past decade of mass protest? Why didn’t it result in political transformation?
Elite Capture by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
It is significant when your biggest complaint about a book is “I wish it were longer.” For me Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is one of the most interesting young scholars working in the United States, and in Elite Capture (Haymarket Books, 2022)he offers a quick analysis of where “identity politics” came from, and what happened to it.
If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
All books featured in this new section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1 Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March/April 2023, pp. xx-xx Middle East Books Review By Vincent Bevins, PublicAffairs, 2023, paperback, 336 pp. MEB $17.99 The decade between 2010 and 2020 saw the largest displays of mass demonstrations in human history.
A Circular Motion
On a cold evening in early February 2011, a small group of activists spilled out of a squat in a Georgian townhouse on Bloomsbury Square. The building – recently purchased by a presenter on Antiques Roadshow – was then home to a loose collective running the Really Free School (RFS), a ramshackle series of political talks, film screenings and discussions. It was a natural hub for students radicalised by recent protests and the burgeoning anti-austerity movement.
From protest movements to revolutionary change
If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution By Vincent Bevins Hachette, 2023 A question troubled journalist Vincent Bevins, as a resident of Brazil in the early 2010s. He began to ask why, given the wave of seemingly progressive protests of the early 2010s, did Brazilians get the opposite result, with Jair Bolsonaro — Donald Trump’s “favourite dictator” — elected as president in 2019?
Why a Decade of Protests Didn’t Lead to Revolution
Between 2010 and 2020, a wave of protests erupted around the world. In some cases, these movements strengthened socialist forces. In others, they opened the door to the Right. Vincent Bevins spoke to Jacobin to explain the causes of this divergence. The last decade was marked by a series of explosive protest movements from the Middle East to Latin America, Asia, and Europe.
Why a Decade of Protests Didn’t Lead to Revolution
Interview by Daniel Denvir The last decade was marked by a series of explosive protest movements from the Middle East to Latin America, Asia, and Europe. After two decades in which liberals insisted that we were living through the “end of history,” these events showed that the demands of the popular classes could not be silenced. However, the legacy of these uprisings has been deeply ambiguous. In some nations, they projected leftist governments to power or built strong institutions.
What Social Media Meant for the Mass Protest Decade w/ Vincent Bevins on Apple Podcasts
Paris Marx is joined by Vincent Bevins to discuss the mass protests of the 2010s, the role that social and traditional media played in them, and why the horizontalism of those movements ultimately didn’t work. Vincent Bevins is a longtime foreign correspondent who has worked for the Washington Post, Financial Times, and LA Times. He’s the author of The Jakarta Method and If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.
Chatter: Lessons from the Decade of Mass Protests, with Vincent Bevins
From the protests in Brazil initially focused on bus fares to the protests in Hong Kong seeking to stop an extradition bill to the protests across the Middle East now collectively referred to as the "Arab Spring," the political and economic mass demonstrations from 2010 to 2020 made it a decade of public protest like no other. Yet the vast majority of these efforts failed to bring about their desired changes--and many of them actually led to the opposite of what they wanted.
Uprising and Counter-Attack: Vincent Bevins on If We Burn
In the early 2010s, squares, parks, streets, and boulevards across the world appeared on television and social media, packed with students, workers, burning tires, tear gas and rubber bullets. Every couple of months, a new capital city erupted into peaceful, and then often violent, protest.
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